From Aberfan t Grenfell

From Aberfan t Grenfell shows that Mike Jenkins’s sublime skills in dialect poetry continue to shine as brightly as ever, as he evokes a bravura array of voices from his Merthyr bro. Using his work to give speech to people without power, Jenkins’s poetry dramatizes the characters and struggles of a community – but also a community’s surviving capacity to raise its voices against the power-structures which cause it to suffer. Compassionate and incisive in equal measure, From Aberfan t Grenfell is required reading in an era of austerity. - Professor Matthew Jarvis, Anthony Dyson Fellow in Poetry, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

These poems locate the poetry freighted in the rhythms and rhetorics of daily speech and everyday conversation, and subtly tool them up and sharpen their purposes with punchlines of dark wit, love and anger in equal measure. Superbly illuminated by Alan Perry’s artwork, this book shows that, in Mike Jenkins’ hands, poetry is not only an unflinching mirror but also a righteous hammer. - Robb Johnson, singer-songwriter